This volume is devoted to a critical discussion and re-appraisal of the work of Anglo-American Idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain and the entire English-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The British Idealists made important contributions to logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Their legacy awaits further exploration and reassessment, and (...) this book is a contribution to this task. The essays in this collection display many aspects of contemporary concern with idealistic philosophy: they range from treatments of logic to consideration of the Absolute, personal idealism, the philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the work of the Anglo-American Idealists has once again been widely discussed and re-considered, and new pathways of research and investigation have been opened. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to a critical discussion and re-appraisal of the work of Anglo-American Idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain and the entire English-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The British Idealists made important contributions to logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Their legacy awaits further exploration and reassessment, and (...) this book is a contribution to this task. The essays in this collection display many aspects of contemporary concern with idealistic philosophy: they range from treatments of logic to consideration of the Absolute, personal idealism, the philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the work of the Anglo-American Idealists has once again been widely discussed and re-considered, and new pathways of research and investigation have been opened. (shrink)

This volume is devoted to a critical discussion and re-appraisal of the work of Anglo-American Idealists of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Idealism was the dominant philosophy in Britain and the entire English-speaking world during the last decades of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. The British Idealists made important contributions to logic, metaphysics, aesthetics, ethics, social and political philosophy, philosophy of history, philosophy of religion and philosophy of mind. Their legacy awaits further exploration and reassessment, and (...) this book is a contribution to this task. The essays in this collection display many aspects of contemporary concern with idealistic philosophy: they range from treatments of logic to consideration of the Absolute, personal idealism, the philosophy of religion, philosophy of art, philosophy of action, and moral and political philosophy. During the first decade of the twenty-first century, the work of the Anglo-American Idealists has once again been widely discussed and re-considered, and new pathways of research and investigation have been opened. (shrink)

In 1999, British Idealism scholars and political philosophers commemorated the centenary of Bernard Bosanquet’s The Philosophical Theory of the State. This book, which is regarded as Bosanquet’s major contribution to political philosophy, contains a detailed account of “the fundamental ideas of a true social philosophy” culminating in a comprehensive analysis of the concept of the state structured around core ideas such as political obligation, the real will and its psychological foundations, freedom, self-realisation, individuality, citizenship, the ethical institutions, and the metaphysics (...) of the self. Bosanquet elaborates the idea of the state by embarking on a re-assessment and critique of Rousseau’s general will and by focusing on a constellation of concepts articulated in Hegel’s Philosophie des Rechts. He attacks the principles of empiricism and atomistic individualism and provides a political philosophy based on the fundamental doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Hegel, Green and Bradley. Bradley’s moral philosophy was one “of the main conceptions underpinning The Philosophical Theory of the State”. Bosanquet refers frequently to Ethical Studies, and acknowledges Bradley’s contribution to representing the Hegelian distinction between Sittlichkeit and Moralität in English philosophy. Ethical Studies has a prominent position in the history of British Idealism: it served “as a manifesto of British Idealism” ; it was the first systematic statement of idealistic ethics in England ; and it expounded and defended a theory of morality as a theory of rational activity. Bosanquet contemplated writing a book on Ethics — a project that was never to be realised because it was forestalled by Bradley’s book. (shrink)

In What Religion Is the British Idealist philosopher Bernard Bosanquet inquires into the essence of religion apprehended as a central human experience which is associated with the dialectical process of the human being’s self-realising endeavour. Bosanquet’s views on religion belong to the second phase of the philosophy of religion of the British Idealists which is characterised by a stronger sense of immanentism. The purpose of this article is, first, to show how Bosanquet’s analysis is based on a conceptual framework which (...) contains notional patterns drawn from a set of normative principles that is derived from his metaphysics. Secondly, the article reconstructs and assesses his views on the meaning and importance of religion and religious consciousness for the human being’s spiritual battle to achieve a state of self-realisation and affirm the spirit that characterises the true content of human nature. Thirdly, the article focuses on the elaboration and crystallisation of the fundamental structural components of Bosanquet’s theory of religion that constitute the conceptual framework of his philosophical project. Throughout, I emphasise that Bosanquet’s analysis of religion is an integral part of his moral and social ontology, the inmost essence of which is the concept of good as the only real and final end of the human being’s struggle for the realisation of the true or real self. It is my contention that Bosanquet defends from the idealistic standpoint a theory of religion that reveals in an original way the essence of religious consciousness in its relation to the meaning of the finite individual’s life. The comprehensive understanding of Bosanquet’s position in What Religion Is presupposes, however, prior knowledge of the basic concepts of his metaphysics. The strength of Bosanquet’s theory of religion derives from: its metaphysical foundation; and its implications for the individual’s ethical and social life. Its contribution to the philosophy of religion lies in the fact that it offers a viable alternative theory to the foundationalist-evidentialist view of religious faith. (shrink)

The growing interest in the philosophy of the British Idealists required a comprehensive and accessible volume containing an anthology of their work. Boucher’s book, with its special emphasis on the moral, social and political philosophy of British Idealism, fills a gap in the existing literature and provides readers with the insights of such philosophers as Edward Caird, T. H. Green, F. H. Bradley, John Watson, Bernard Bosanquet, Henry Jones, D. G. Ritchie, J.H. Muirhead, Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, and J.S. Mackenzie.